Posts Tagged Baseboard

Several months without a post. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy, just that I haven’t been working on my own home. In fact, in the last two months I’ve helped my brother-in-law with different aspects of their master bathroom remodel, and a partial remodel on my mother’s kitchen (reconfigured the existing base cabinets, installed a dishwasher, built additional base cabinets, and installed new countertop).

But sometime in between building cabinets in my unheated garage in the middle of an Ohio February, I finished painting the spare bedroom and nailed the window trim & baseboards back into place. Wow, did that make a difference!

While reinstalling the baseboard, I added outlets to the perimeter of the bedroom through the baseboard. Each bedroom only had 1 original outlet to begin with. And I added the new outlets in the baseboard, just as the existing outlets were placed. I used brown outlet and outlet covers to help them disappear into the dark woodwork.

I already described the process of sanding & re-painting the wardrobe, and installing the light. Along with all new wiring, I can add this room to the 99% finished list along with the bathroom and laundry. (Like nearly every other room, the floor needs a few nails here and there to secure the boards, and then a whole-house floor refinishing party.)

Lastly, I found a door to fit at an architectural salvage store (the spare bedroom was door-less when I bought the house). It matches the bathroom door, but unfortunately was painted on one side. I spent the better part of 2 days stripping the paint – first white, then orange underneath.

It was the correct height, but actually just about 1/4″ too narrow. I glued & clamped a thin piece of pine to the hinge edge of the door, then with a hand plane and sandpaper made it flush with the sides of the door.

The other side was stained & varnished almost a matching color to my woodwork, so I just sanded off the finish and then re-stained both sides of the door to blend the color. It took 2 coats of stain on the freshly stripped side to get dark enough, then 2 coats of satin polyurethane. The piece I added to meet the right width is almost unnoticeable.

I’ve been collecting glass doorknobs when I find them inexpensively at antique stores or Goodwill, so I just had to buy the mortise latch threaded spindle – which I was pleasantly surprised to find they still sell at the hardware store. For me, there is nothing so rewarding as the feeling of putting the finishing touches on a completed project.

So now I begin the same process to the other bedroom, starting with stripping the woodwork and restoring the windows again.